Land Use

First food: business of taste

Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …

Compendium Environment Statistics India - 2016

The Compendium of Environment Statistics aims to serve as reference material for environment planners and policy makers as well as other Government and Non-Government organizations and research institutions to increase awareness and knowledge of the environmental situation of the country. The need for improvements in the field of data and …

Recent grassland losses are concentrated around U.S. ethanol refineries

Although the United States has pursued rapid development of corn ethanol as a matter of national biofuel policy, relatively little is known about this policy's widespread impacts on agricultural land conversion surrounding ethanol refineries. This knowledge gap impedes policy makers' ability to identify and mitigate potentially negative environmental impacts of …

Vulnerability of Indian agriculture to climate change: A study of the Himalayan region state

Climate variability and changes are the emerging challenges for Indian agriculture with the growing population to ensure national food security. A study was conducted to assess the Climatic Change effects in medium to low altitude areas of the Himalayan region causing changes in land use and cereal crop productivity with …

Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States

Fighting wildfires in the United States costs billions of dollars annually. Public dialog and ongoing research have focused on increasing wildfire risk because of climate warming, overlooking the direct role that people play in igniting wildfires and increasing fire activity. Our analysis of two decades of government agency wildfire records …

Selenium deficiency risk predicted to increase under future climate change

The trace element selenium is essential for human health and is required in a narrow dietary concentration range. Insufficient selenium intake has been estimated to affect up to 1 billion people worldwide. Dietary selenium availability is controlled by soil–plant interactions, but the mechanisms governing its broad-scale soil distributions are largely …

Spatial and taxonomic patterns of honey bee foraging: A choice test between urban and agricultural landscapes

The health of honey bee colonies cannot be understood apart from the landscapes in which they live. Urban and agricultural developments are two of the most dramatic and widespread forms of human land use, but their respective effects on honey bees remain poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the relative attractiveness …

Realigning priorities: climate vaulnerability assessment - Terai Arc Landscape

Global climate change projections for Nepal and the Himalayas suggest significant changes in temperature and precipitation, including increased monsoon (summer) precipitation and more variable and highly unpredictable actual rainfall patterns. The projections also suggest warmer winters and more frequent extreme weather events, with extended droughts between periods of intense rain. …

Age, extent and carbon storage of the central Congo Basin peatland complex

Peatlands are carbon-rich ecosystems that cover just three per cent of Earth’s land surface, but store one-third of soil carbon. Peat soils are formed by the build-up of partially decomposed organic matter under waterlogged anoxic conditions. Most peat is found in cool climatic regions where unimpeded decomposition is slower, but …

From Rackham to REVEALS: Reflections on palaeoecological approaches to woodland and trees

In this paper we reflect on aspects of palaeoecological approaches to understanding past woodland environments. With increasing requirements for interdisciplinarity in research, and an increase in popular interest in the ‘natural environment’ such as ‘new nature writing’, we suggest that palaeoecology is potentially well situated to engage with other audiences …

Science-based GHG emissions targets for agriculture and forestry commodities

A new report enables agricultural companies to set science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets for key commodities. Funded by the KR Foundation, the University of Aberdeen, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and Ecofys have developed a new science-based target setting methodology for key commodities of the Agriculture, Forestry and Other …

Humans as agents in the termination of the African humid period

There is great uncertainty over the timing and magnitude of the termination of the African Humid Period (AHP). Spanning from the early to middle Holocene, the AHP was a period of enhanced moisture over most of northern and eastern Africa. However, beginning 8000 years ago the moisture balance shifted due …

Impending extinction crisis of the world’s primates: Why primates matter

Nonhuman primates, our closest biological relatives, play important roles in the livelihoods, cultures, and religions of many societies and offer unique insights into human evolution, biology, behavior, and the threat of emerging diseases. They are an essential component of tropical biodiversity, contributing to forest regeneration and ecosystem health. Current information …

Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history

The populations of light-demanding trees that dominate the canopy of central African forests are now aging. Here, we show that the lack of regeneration of these populations began ca. 165 ya (around 1850) after major anthropogenic disturbances ceased. Since 1885, less itinerancy and disturbance in the forest has occurred because …

Economic development and forest cover: Evidence from satellite data

Ongoing deforestation is a pressing, global environmental issue with direct impacts on climate change, carbon emissions, and biodiversity. There is an intuitive link between economic development and overexploitation of natural resources including forests, but this relationship has proven difficult to establish empirically due to both inadequate data and convoluting geo-climactic …

Decadal-scale relationship between measurements of aerosols, land-use change, and fire over Southeast Asia

A simultaneous analysis of 13 years of remotely sensed data of land cover, fires, precipitation, and aerosols from the MODIS, TRMM, and MISR satellites and the AERONET network over Southeast Asia is performed, leading to a set of robust relationships between land-use change and fire being found on inter-annual and …

Can conservation funding be left to carbon finance? Evidence from participatory future land use scenarios in Peru, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Mexico

Revenues derived from carbon have been seen as an important tool for supporting forest conservation over the past decade. At the same time, there is high uncertainty about how much revenue can reasonably be expected from land use emissions reductions initiatives. Despite this uncertainty, REDDþ projects and conservation initiatives that …

Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding the status of wetland/water bodies within the 314 acres of land of Hindustan Motors, West Bengal, 05/01/2017

Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Pawan Kumar Somani Vs State of West Bengal & Others dated 05/01/2017. The applicant (Pawan Kumar Somani) has prayed for issuance of a direction upon the respondents to first quantify the area of wet land/marshy land/low …

Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains

A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, locates hotspots of threats to wildlife and describes how they are related to consumers' demand in other parts of the world. Identifying hotspots of species threat has been a successful approach for setting conservation priorities. One important challenge in …

Understanding agricultural drivers of deforestation through remote sensing: opportunities and limitations in sub-Saharan Africa

Effective monitoring of deforestation and cropland expansion in Africa requires reliable estimates of land cover area. However, continental scale land cover datasets generated solely or partially through remote sensing technologies show large differences in the extent and spatial distribution of forest and cropland. In this working paper identify 14 of …

Resource efficiency of future EU demand for bioenergy

Greenhouse gas emissions from the land-use sector will be lower if the rising demand for bioenergy is met with worldwide protection for areas important for biodiversity and carbon storage, shows this IIASA policy brief. Increasing demand for bioenergy in the EU means that there is a pressing need to understand …

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